Teaching new investigators

Hey family

Well today its a nice 80 degrees outside and everyone is dressed up in jackets and coats. I'm doing great.

This week has been a lot of work. We spent a lot of time finding new investigators. I don't know why but many of the investigators that we have taught in the past aren't keeping the appointments that they originally set up with us and it seems to be hard to meet with us again. So with the free time we have more time to find new investigators.

For example this last week we found through our efforts 14 new investigators. I think everyone we taught are in families. That's what I have found out the biggest key to the gospel is. Is teaching families. Because that is what the gospel is.

One of the new families that we found is a family of women. We were going into an area that we once had several investigators in several months ago so we were hoping to find maybe one of the former investigators and see if they were ready to learn further with us. At the same time we were going to visit a investigator and try to invite them to church to see if they would go. As we were walking buy some houses there was a tent with some childrens clothes hanging up. I saw a lady with her baby sitting down and smiling at us as we walked by. Normally I try to avoid all contact with women here that smile at us because usually they are thinking differently when I talk to them ( I'll let you figure that out)but, for some reason I went against all reason and turned around and walked into the tent to talk to the lady. After a few minutes of talking, I figured out that her name was boo(ปู) or crab in Thai and that she lived there with her step mother and step sister. She had recently divorced and moved out to Ubon to be with family. Her step mother was named bui (ปุ้ย) and her step sister named yoke (หยก). We told them that we wanted to share a message about family with them but, we needed a member of the opposite sex to be with us. They agreed and on the following day we returned to talk about the gospel and how it helps the family. They were really excited to learn. We are going to try to see them again tomorrow after we teach English with them. I'm excited to teach them.

We found another person that I am really excited to teach today. Her name is jitri(จิตรี) She is a elderly lady who loves to take care of cats. Lots of cats. Lately when we have gone tracting to find new investigators we stay in areas with in 1 or 2 kilos from the church. That way many of those we teach really don't have any excuse to not go to church because of travel. Anyways every now and then, in walking in an area that we go often we find a street that we haven't ever taken a step on. So it was with Jitri street. We hadn't walked out very far until we saw her in her house, which is a old townhouse that doesn't have a front wall. She uses tarps to block it off. We called her and she looked up and asked in broken English, "You are missionaries right". We said yes and talked a little about what we had to share. She asked, "Are you guys Christian?", this time in Thai. And I said that we were Mormon. That threw her off. She then asked, "I have never heard of Mormon. What is your God". I answered Heavenly Father. She then asked ya well what does Heavenly Father look like, I then began to explain that he looks like you and me or we look like him because he created us in his image. He has a perfect body like us. This seemed to intrigue her because she invited us in. Needless to say we didn't go in because we needed to have to have a member of the opposite sex with us. But she had a lot of questions and began to ask. It turns out that she had been reading a book about a guy that has a religious theory about how everyone has a spiritual father. She showed us the book and showed us a 12 sided star on the back she said that this is what the book says
Heavenly Father looks like. Then she asks do you have a picture of what Heavenly Father looks like? Thankfully I had a passaolng that talks about the first vision. I pulled that out and showed it to her and pointed out in the pitcure that see here is a picture of what he looks like and his Son Jesus Christ as well. She was even more intrigued. So we asked if we could come back to see her again with a guy memeber with us. The next day was just as cool. We are going to go back tonight to see her again.

Well I'm really short on time today

I love you all

Elder Brandon John Holt